Beating the 401(k) Horse To Death...

October 12th, 2007 at 03:00 pm

Okay, we've beaten this to death for now, but I still want to add a few more thoughts on the subject, after reading some comments from Peter Jeppson on the subject. There are two potential problems with 401(k)s: First, your money is tied up. Usually the 401(k) has a trustee who has already decided where you are going to put the money. Usually, it's in mutual funds. Peter calls this being "trapped." "You don't have any control over it," he says.

Second: Since the money is in the hands of professional money managers, you yourself are not growing, developing, and learning how to put money in motion to turn it for a profit.

Peter says: "A person must accept the responsibility to prepare for their own retirement. Nobody is going to look out for their retirement as much as they are. Therefore, to give up your money to someone else and not to learn about it, not to have it right in front of you to calculate how much you are earning, what is it doing for you, and what the future holds in terms of tax rate applied to that money I think is a trap. I think it's wrong. I think a person should keep control of their money and thus learn from it. I personally have done this and found that I've outstripped the 401(k) many times over."

Just one last thought worth thinking about. There's more out there, even for "Joe Average."